Jewett Jurors Had Doubt, Angst

If you are a juror in a criminal trial and you have it, the law says you must return a verdict of not guilty.

That is what a six-member jury in Palm Beach County Circuit Court did last week when they acquitted two West Palm Beach police officers of all charges for the in-custody death of Robert Jewett.

Some of the jurors, however, said the officers may have acted improperly that night, although there was insufficient evidence to convict them of a crime.

``In my mind, what happened there shouldn`t have happened,`` said jury foreman Keith Girten, a banker who lives near Wellington. ``There wasn`t enough there to find them guilty. As to how they handled the situation ... you`ve got to say it was pretty sloppy handling.``

The officers, Stephen Lee Rollins, 36, and Glen Thurlow, 34, could have faced life in prison had they been convicted as charged of second-degree murder and aggravated battery.

But their defense team chipped away tirelessly at the prosecution`s case, highlighting inconsistencies, hammering witnesses` recollections and offering their own theory as to how the death could have occurred without any wrongdoing by the officers.

In the end, jurors said, those bits and pieces added up to one giant question mark hanging over the state`s case -- a case that relied heavily on the at- times inconsistent account of a single eyewitness.

``We could not say they were guilty without a reasonable doubt. We just couldn`t,`` juror Loretta Sharpe of Lake Worth said after Wednesday`s verdict. ``The state did not prove they were guilty.``

Earl Hamburger, an IBM employee from Boca Raton who was an alternate juror in the case, said he agreed with the jury`s verdict.

``There were too many conflicting stories,`` he said. ``There just wasn`t enough evidence to convict the policemen of anything.``

Jurors said they discussed long and hard the possibility that the officers used excessive force against Jewett, 34, after a fight broke out when they stopped to ticket him for hitchhiking on South Dixie Highway last Nov. 24. The jurors even tried to simulate parts of the fight in the jury room.

The biggest inconsistency jurors could not reconcile was the eyewitness testimony of Joseph Huffman, a passing motorist, who said he saw Thurlow holding a helpless Jewett in a choke hold while Rollins viciously struck him in the groin 20 to 40 times with a heavy steel flashlight.

During the trial, at the request of the defense, Huffman pummelled the flashlight into a canvas punching bag with all his strength to demonstrate the force Rollins used.

But autopsy photographs showed no evidence of such repeated, forceful blows. Jewett`s testicles were hemorrhaged and blood-filled, but his thighs, abdomen and penis were unmarked.

Jurors said they discounted Huffman`s testimony because they found it unbelievable that such violent blows would not have left welts and bruises.

Without Huffman`s testimony, Assistant State Attorney Andrew Slater had little else to offer to substantiate his position that the two officers lost control and beat Jewett lifeless.

He presented two medical experts who disagreed on the cause of death, further muddying the state`s position.

Broward County Medical Examiner Ronald Wright said he thought Jewett suffocated after his windpipe was crushed. The state`s other expert, Palm Beach County Medical Examiner James Benz said he thought Jewett was dying of suffocation but the ``coup de grace`` that actually killed him was a massive force to his chest that punched a hole in his heart.

The defense then brought in two doctors of its own with still two more theories -- that Jewett died of a heart attack brought on by the exertion of the fight and that he died when the sac around his heart filled with blood, stopping the heartbeat.

The prosecution presented a string of employees from The Palm Beach Post, in front of whose headquarters in West Palm Beach the fight occurred. None of the workers saw the fight, but they reported hearing sounds of the struggle, though no screams of pain.

Juror Charles Bissinger said he could not believe Jewett would not have screamed from the pain of such a beating, even if he were being choked at the time.

Jurors said the prosecution gave no reason for them not to believe the officers` version of events, even though they agreed the officers had a strong motive for lying.

The officers said Jewett started the fight by elbowing Rollins in the chest as he attempted to pat search Jewett`s pockets. Rollins testified he tripped and fell in the ensuing struggle and that Thurlow ran to his rescue, grabbing Jewett around the upper chest -- not the neck.

The injuries occurred, the officers testified, when all three fell forcefully to the ground with Jewett in the middle. Under the defense scenario, the weight of Rollins` 240-pound frame broke Jewett`s ribs and compressed his heart, forcing the hole; Thurlow`s arm accidentally snapped up, breaking bones in Jewett`s throat.